File Formats Documentation

Interactive Panorama Viewer uses two different types of configuration files:
a panorama project configuration and a scene configuration. Those two file
types are explained here in detail.

Panorama Projects

A paonorma project file typically has the extension .panorama. Every
compilation of panorama images has exactly one panorama project file. This
file specifies some global settings and points to the very first scene file.
The file contains one attribute/value pair per line (very similar to
windows .ini files).

Attribute

Description

Default Target

File name of the very first scene that will be loaded
when opening the project.

H-Rotation

The horizontal rotation of the viewer that will be
set when loading the first scene.

V-Rotation

The vertical rotation of the viewer that will be
set when loading the first scene.

Slices

The number of slices that will be used to render the
cylinder. This value has to be a power of
2 (example: 64).

Fading Time

Time (in seconds) a fading between two scenes will
take.

Fading Color

The color used to fade between two scenes.

Fullscreen

A boolean value indicating if the application should
start up in full screen mode. 1 = full
screen; 0 = windowed mode

Fullscreen X-Resolution

Horizontal display resolution when using full screen
mode.

Fullscreen Y-Resolution

Vertical display resolution when using full screen
mode.

Fullscreen Bit Depth

Color depth for fullscreen mode. If set to -1
a color depth will be chosen automatically.

Fullscreen Refresh Rate

Refresh rate for fullscreen mode. If set to -1
a refresh rate will be chosen automatically.

Window Width

Width of the main window (if not in fullscreen mode).

Height Width

Height of the main window (if not in fullscreen mode).

Scene Configurations

A scene configuration file typically has the extension .scene. It contains
all configurations for one single panorama image. The syntax is the
same as for the project files.

Attribute

Description

Image

File name of the panorama image. Supported file
formats are JPEG and PNG. The image
size has to be a power of 2 (example:
1024x512 pixel). If your image has a different
size you can stretch it and then remove
contortions with the "Original Width" and
"Original Height" parameter.

Original Width

If the image has been stretched to obtain a size
that matches a power of 2 then this parameter needs
to contain the width the image had before
stretching, to remove contortions. If the image
hasn't been streched you need to set this
attribute to the actual width of your image.

Original Height

Same as Original Width but for the image height.

Vertical Viewing Angle

The vertical dihedral angle of the field of view.
(smaller values zoom in / larger values zoom out)

Links

The number of links that are contained in this
scene.

Link[n] Target

File name of the target scene. Replace [n]
with the number of the current link, starting with
1.

Link[n] H-Angle

Horizontal angle of the link center.

Link[n] V-Angle

Vertical angle of the link center.

Link[n] H-Delta

Width of the link (in degrees).

Link[n] V-Delta

Height of the link (in degrees).

Link[n] H-Rotation

Horizontal rotation of the viewer when entering the
new scene.

Link[n] V-Rotation

Vertical rotation of the viewer when entering the
new scene.

Sounds

Number of sound sources in this scene.

Sound[n] File

File name of the audio file. Replace [n] with
then number of the current sound source, starting with 1.
Audio file should be in mono format, or they will be
treated as background sounds. Supported file formats
are: OGG and WAV.

Sound[n] H-Angle

Horizontal angle of the sound source position (if
it isn't a background sound).

Sound[n] V-Angle

Vertical angle of the sound source position (if it
isn't a background sound).

Sound[n] Background

A boolean value indicating if this is a background
sound (i.e. the sound source has the same position
as the viewer).

Sound[n] Volume

The volume of the sound source. If you set this
value to 1.0 the sound will be played with
it's original volume. Values larger than 1.0
are possible.

Sound[n] Looping

A boolean value indicating if the sound should be
looped.

Calculating angles

Calculating the horizontal angles is very trivial: the leftmost pixel has
the angle 0°, the rightmost pixel has the angle 360° and scale is
linear.

Calculating the vertical angles is rather complex because the scale
isn't linear. To calculate the vertical angles (and also the
horizontal angles) you can use the excel sheet that comes with the
application.